Quotes About Existence

I always thought my alternative life, if I wasn't acting, would be to become a midwife. I love women. I want to help them exist.

Life is life, and you've got to be mindful of that.

In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.

The Western media is a Ministry of Truth that operates full-time in support of the artificial existence that Westerners live inside The Matrix where Westerners exist without thought. Considering their inaptitude and inaction, Western peoples might as well not exist.

I don't know quite how a story develops in my head. It is a bit chaotic. If I am working on a series, one of the main characters at least is already in existence as well as some setting and minor characters. Finding the other main character can be a challenge. Sometimes this character already exists in a minor role in another book.

What I crave, and what I want to see on television, is when you see a minority character, not to have it being about them being black or Asian or Latino. If you watch 'Friends,' for example, it's not about a group of people being white. It's about a group of people being friends, you know? You should just let the characters exist.

The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and yet to be that thing.

The minute you're born, you're getting older.

The past no longer is, the future is not yet here; there is only one moment in which life is available, and that is the present moment.

Q. What will happen to our consciousness after we die? A. What happens to consciousness when we're still alive? If you can answer that question, the other question will be answered as well.

Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge.

Touching the ultimate dimension is very important. The wave can live the life of a wave, but it can also do better. It can live every moment of its life deeply touching its nature of no-birth and no-death, that is, its nature as water. If the wave realizes that it is water, its fear disappears. It enjoys its rising and falling much more. Rising is joyful, and falling is, too.

The Buddha said, "The past no longer exists, and the future is not yet here." There is only a single moment in which we can truly be alive, and that is the present moment

You think that you will die in a few years, or twenty years, or thirty years. That's not true. You are dying now. You have been dying all the time. It's actually very pleasant to die, which is also to live.

don't exercise to get fit or be healthier; I do it to enjoy being alive.

Sit in order to sit. Stand in order to stand. There is no goal or aim in sitting.

We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living! We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.

Dear friends, I have seen deeply that nothing can be by itself alone, that everything has to inter-be with everything else. I have seen that all beings are endowed with the nature of awakening.

Our body is a masterpiece of the cosmos. Our body carries within it the stars, the moon, the universe, and the presence of all our ancestors. How many millions of years of evolution has it taken to give rise to these wondrous two eyes, legs, feet, and hands? Countless life-forms are supporting our existence in this moment. Reconnecting with our physical body takes only a few moments of stopping and breathing with awareness.

I think (too much), therefore I am (not there to live my life).

According to our narrow view of a truly existing self, life is just my body, my house, my spouse, my children, and my riches. But if we can extend beyond every limit we have created for ourselves, we will see that our life exists in everything, and that the deterioration of phenomena cannot touch that life, just as the arising and disappearing of the waves cannot influence the being of the water.

Buddha said, "The past no longer exists, and the future is not yet here." There is only a single moment in which we can truly be alive, and that is the present moment. Being present in the here and now is our practice.

As for the world of phenomena, we are inclined to believe that it is illusory, separate from reality. And we think that only by ridding ourselves of it shall we be able to reach the world of True Mind. That, too, is an error. This world of birth and death, this world of lemon trees and maple trees, is the world of reality in itself. There is no reality that exists outside of the lemon trees and the maples.

French philosopher Henri Bergson called élan vital. Like all species, we have a will to live and a strong desire to cling to and protect our life and to defend ourselves from danger. But we have to be cautious not to let our instinct of self-preservation and auto-defense mislead us into thinking we have a separate self.